Strong Support at Senate Hearing for Proposed $100 Million RIPTA Bond
Measure would provide wish list of transit improvements
May 9, 2025
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PROVIDENCE — While the General Assembly debates several bills concerning funding for the Rhode Island Public Transit Authority, one piece of proposed legislation looks to put the issue before the people.
The bill (S0446/H5470) would put a $100 million bond on the 2026 ballot to be spent on Rhode Island’s Transportation Master Plan (TMP).
Approved by the Statewide Planning Commission in 2020, the TMP is a wish list of transit improvements, from items as small as fixing and installing more bus shelters to projects as large as creating a high-capacity transit corridor that would run through Rhode Island’s urban core.
“A strong and accessible public bus system is a backbone of equitable transportation, economic mobility, and environmental sustainability,” said Sen. Lammis Vargas, D-Cranston, the bill’s sponsor, at a recent Senate Finance Committee hearing.
Vargas said she decided to sponsor the bill after hearing from her constituents that they wanted to see public transit improved in Rhode Island.
Several people spoke in favor of the bill at the hearing or submitted written testimony, including Providence Foundation director David Salvatore and Amalgamated Transit Union president Walter Melillo, head of the union representing RIPTA drivers.
“This is something that should go before the people,” resident Lisa Jones testified. “It would definitely pass.”
Jones said she moved back to Rhode Island a few years ago from an area that didn’t have any public transportation, and from what she’s observed and researched, RIPTA is a top-performing system for its size and funding, although she said she thinks it could be better.
“We all know RIPTA is due for improvement,” said Jones, adding that the bond money could make the difference.
“As you heard, this bill has wide support,” Randall Rose from the Kennedy Plaza Resiliency
Coalition said. “It will allow the public transit system to cover people, all sorts of people, in all parts of the state. It’s an important modernization of the public transit system.”
Although he said he supports the bill, Rose added that he would like to see some changes to its language to clarify that the bond won’t just go toward a new bus hub.
Save RIPTA campaign organizer Nicole O’Loughlin spoke in support of the bill and outlined all the different projects that it could help accomplish.
“Right now, taking the bus can take two to five times the amount of time it should have taken to get to where they need to go,” she said, something dedicated bus lanes could help remedy. Meanwhile, less than than 9% of the state’s bus stops have a shelter or a bench, something else TMP bond money could help rectify, if it were to pass.
“We need to make sure that we are investing in as much as possible,” McLaughlin said.
Although the bond would increase funding for RIPTA, it won’t solve its current financial woes. The $32 million deficit facing the agency impacts its operating budget, or the dollars it uses on getting buses and people around the state every day — mostly diesel and salaries. The bond would provide funding for capital projects, which are largely one-time spending items.
The committee voted to hold the bill for further study.
Randall is right to be concerned about the language, the 2014 transit bond, explicitly for improving transit hubs throughout the state, but RIDOT, the Governor and even city government have been trying to use it entirely to destroy the Kennedy Plaza hub and move it, at great expense, to an inferior location, all to please politically connected real estate interests
Thank you, Barry. I moved to RI five years ago (six?), so I’m not up on the whole history, but my understanding is that the transit bond money was also used disproportionately to fund highway infrastructure, not public transit and alternative transit like bikes. I’d have a lot of trouble voting for a bond that didn’t say, in clear, plain simple language, this money is to improve RIPTA service in these ways. Period.
We need to keep RIPTA running for people reasons and economic reasons. Without RIPTA many people will not be able to get to work, to school, to medical appointments etc. We also will not be able to improve our economy without RIPTA. Business will take their money elsewhere.
I worked for RIPTA for almost 14 years and all the Union and the Management did together is conspired together on how they could get a different kind of ridership to pay and ride the bus daily, eliminating the ridership that transportation was designed and proposed for which was the need for people who did not drive, were to young to drive, who are in school ( college) and right now can’t afford to pay the bills of owning a car, people in wheelchairs who need to go to doctor appointments and shopping for food and want to be more dependent and not depend on other people to take them places. This Agency has taken that independence from the Rhode Island Residents and they have taken notice of that and this is why ridership is lower for Ripta in the last years and they continue to blame it on COVID-19 that has not affected their continued efforts to become Real Estate Agents and not a Transportation Agency that serves Rhode Island Customers but now serves Fall River Residents and has left out communities with known low income but single mothers workers two and three different jobs a day that need and deserves to have this RIPTA service in their area safely transporting them to work and the kids to daycare. That’s when I would support a 100 million bond but until then Iam not supporting RIPTA and will be against what I know about them and that they have been covering up for years.